


Back to Square One

by Mshpiece



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Burns, Non-Sexual Slavery, Other, Past Abuse, Scratching, Slavery, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 06:39:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5574842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mshpiece/pseuds/Mshpiece
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exploration of Pearl wanting to talk to the other gems about her life before the Rebellion.<br/>The additional tags don't go very in-depth on those subjects but I put them there as a warning regardless. And the characters are only mentioned, unfortunately.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back to Square One

Maybe one day she’ll tell someone about all the abuse she’s suffered. Maybe one day she’ll open up about everything she’s gone through.  
She didn’t become “a fancy pearl” through dainty steps and doing what she was told. Countless regenerations, far before the ones she had in the wars, long even before she had met Rose. The terrors that tore the sheets she would fold for her, remembering the misplaced steps and the smacks and the ripped flesh and the stings of whips and the feeling of fire and-  
Things of a different time.

She hinted at it, but nothing past that. She knew that Rose and Garnet, and the rest of Garnet, had some inkling of the strife endured by defective pearls, and had enough intuition to figure out they had told Amethyst just the amount to keep her from making any inappropriate comments. All Steven knew was what Peridot had blabbered about. She certainly didn’t know. She was too self-absorbed in her own class discourse to pay heed to those lower than the dirt she stood on.  
But they never asked anything further. Not even when she froze up. She recalled several hypothetical conversations she had held in her mind with Rose, in which Rose had simply said that she didn’t think Pearl would want to discuss the trauma. There were only multiple hypothetic conversations because Pearl couldn’t work past that comment, couldn’t think of a response adequate enough, so the conversation was never brought to life.  
Sleep had helped. It was painful, being that vulnerable again, but the effects it had on Pearl’s mind were astounding. She hadn’t quite begun to sleep every night, like Steven had to, but she was working her way to it. Once, twice if she was lucky or particularly exhausted, a week, and the whole night too. She was careful to not oversleep. She didn’t want to lose herself in her grief, like she had suspected Amethyst employing. That was her initial hesitation to sleeping in the first place. But now she understood why Amethyst did it all the time. There was just a balance to it that Pearl hadn’t found yet; that being how to combat the defenseless open feeling it gave, and how to avoid slipping into it entirely.  
Sometimes conversation would turn one way and Pearl noted she could mention something about her time as a slave. A few times, she had gotten as far as taking a breath, ready to speak. But then something stopped her. The mood. Her own self-doubt. There was probably a more appropriate time to bring something like that up. Things were cheery right now, and considering all that Steven had gone through in the past few days, Pearl didn’t want to disrupt that.  
She didn’t even know why she wanted to talk about it. She hadn’t wanted to tell Rose when it was all still fresh in her mind. It was far away in the past enough to not hurt anymore. She was starting to forget it, though, and she wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Sometimes while she was sleeping, she would wake in a panic, unable to reach back and remember what was torturing her subconscious. It terrified her. And there wasn’t a way to get comfort, because no one knew.  
And so here we were, back to square one.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry that it's been so long since I was able to publish another Pearl fanfiction! I was in a bit of a creative slump, and couldn't come up with anything to write.  
> This might evolve into a longer story. I'm not sure; let me know in the comments if you'd like it to.  
> Thank you very much for reading!


End file.
